For
a Class-Struggle Fight Against the Racist Union-Busters!Defeat the Capitalist Onslaught Against Public
Education!Teachers,
Minorities, Immigrants TargetedThe public school system is the focal
point of an assault by key sectors of the U.S. ruling class. “Education
reform” was a top issue for both Democrats and Republicans in last
year’s presidential election, as it is in the New York City mayoral
election this coming fall. Masked by phony pro-children rhetoric and
squabbling over vouchers, there is a “bipartisan” consensus to
“reinvent” public education to reflect the demands of the capitalist
market. As usual, teachers are portrayed as the obstacle to high
standards and improving schools. The effect of this and
similar reforms around the country will be to dramatically increase the
tendency
to a two-tier education system, with more rigorous schools for those
considered “college bound” and barracks-like “academies” for those
tracked to be low-wage unskilled labor. The purpose of all the rulers’
talk of “standards” is not to improve the chances for poor inner-city
children – they don’t give a
damn about that – but to make the labor force more “competitive”
globally
with its imperialist rivals, to “Americanize” the new wave of
immigrants,
and ultimately to prepare the population for war. Defeat
the Capitalist Onslaught Against Public Education! (June 2001)

Equal
Language Rights for All! Full
Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!Bilingual Education Under Racist AttackThe nationwide campaign against bilingual
education is escalating. Last November, two states had a reactionary
referendum on the ballot outlawing programs with classroom instruction
in non-English languages. They even threaten to jail teachers for using
any language other than English. The attack on bilingual ed goes
together with the detentions of thousands of immigrants following the
11 September 2001 WTC attack and preparations for the U.S. invasion of
Iraq. It is part of the hysteria against “foreigners” which accompanies
imperialist war. It underscores the urgent need for the workers
movement to mobilize in defense of immigrants’ rights, including
demanding full citizenship rights for all immigrants, no discrimination
against any language, and defnese of bilingual education against racist
assault. Bilingual
Education Under Racist Attack (January 2003)

Students:
Ally with the Working Class!Smash Racist Purge of CUNY–Fight
for Open Admissions, Free Tuition!
In his annual “state of the city” speech last year, Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani launched a campaign to exclude more than half of all
incoming students from the City University of New York (CUNY). This
year in his report the mayor
ranted against CUNY, saying “that’s a system we would blow up.” A
blatantly
racist purge is being carried out in the name of “standards.” The door
is
to be slammed in the face of all those who fail even one of three
entrance
exams. Remedial courses for incoming students are to be eliminated,
first
from the four-year colleges and then from the two-year community
colleges.
Particularly targeted for exclusion are racial minorities, immigrants
and
women. As one student protester’s sign proclaimed at a January 4
hearing
on CUNY, the aim of this purge is to introduce “educational apartheid.”Smash Racist
Purge
of CUNY (February 1999)

NYC Mayoral Child Abuse: Bloomberg/Klein
Beat Up on 8-Year-OldsForced
Flunk-Outs and the Assault on Public EducationWhat It’s All
About: Corporatization, Resegregation and WarNYC billionaire
mayor Michael Bloomberg and his flunkey, schools chancellor Joel Klein,
have set a quota of 15,000 3rd-graders to be deliberately failed. This
is child abuse on a grand scale. The racist city rulers have set out
to ruin the lives of these primarily black, Latino and immigrant
students in a cynical electoral ploy, and to further a bipartisan
capitalist agenda of privatizing, corporatizing and resegregating
public education. Moreover, this use of standardized tests goes hand in
hand with the drive to undermine or break teachers unions, and to
regiment the population for imperialist war.Forced
Flunk-Outs and the Assault on Public Education
(19 April 2004)

NYC Department
of Education: Corporatization,
Repression and Union-BustingSince
taking control of the New York City schools five years ago, Mayor
Michael Bloomberg and his factotum Joel Klein have relentlessly pursued
an agenda of corporatization of public education. This has meant
top-down control by managers with little or no educational experience
or knowledge; multi-million-dollar contracts for educational
entrepreneurs and corporate services vendors; bullying police presence
in and around the schools, including beatings and arbitrary arrests of
students and teachers; massive testing, with “high stakes” tests
victimizing poor, minority and immigrant students; the wholesale
elimination of bilingual schools and failure to service English
language learners (in a city where more than half the students come
from immigrant families); military recruiters
trolling school grounds looking for cannon fodder, and much more. Down
with mayor control of the schools! To put a stop to the destructive
disorganization of “public” education, New York
City schools should be run by
elected bodies of teachers, students, workers and parents.NYC
DoE: Corporatization, Repression and Union-Busting!(6 June
2007)

Cops
Out of the Schools! No to Mayoral Control! For
Teacher-Student-Worker-Parent Control of the SchoolsNYC Teachers, Students Under AttackIn
the
umpteenth
reorganization of the New York City schools, NYC schools chancellor
“excessed” more than 700 teachers in alternative education programs,
forcing them to reapply for their jobs. Hundreds of experienced
teachers with excellent records ended up in Absent Teacher Reserves due
to the UFT leadership giving up seniority rights in the 2005 contract.
Klein told the New York Daily News
that “we should be able to terminate those employees” altogether. The
DOE has been trying to eliminate alternative education programs for
several years. Behind this is a program to corporatize and privatize
“public” education. Instead of a quality education being a right, they
want to respond to “market forces” by supplying a “two-tiered”
education system with good schools for a petty-bourgeois elite and
stripped down, scripted 3Rs programs for future low-skilled workers.
Now it is revealed that the reauthorization bill for the No Child Left
Behind law includes a provision requiring schools to introduce “merit
pay” or forfeit federal money. The union should demand that NCLB
be abolished, not “improved,” as UFT/AFT
tops want.NYC
Teachers, Students Under
Attack(17 October
2007)

Bloomberg/Klein
School “Reform” Flunks Out“Merit
Pay,” Witchhunting and Corporatizing Public EducationClose
Down the “Rubber Rooms” – Reinstate All “Excessed” Teachers! For Union Control of Hiring!The
mounting attack on New York City teachers by schools chancellor Joel
Klein and billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg is only the tip of the
iceberg. A full-scale assault on public education being waged by the
Republican White House, the Democratic state house and top capitalists
like Bill Gates. They are out to reshape the workforce to “compete in a
global economy,” and for that they want to put the schools under
private control, push most students out by the 10th grade and bust
teachers unions. The day before national test results revealed that New
York City schools failed to improve math and reading scores, Klein
announced that the NYC Department of Education had set up a “Teacher
Performance Unit” to drive out teachers they want to get rid of. Yet
instead of fighting to defeat the drive to corporatize and privatize
public education, United Federation of Teachers leader Randi Weingarten
negotiated the introduction of “school-based” merit pay. “Merit” or “performance” pay,
however you package it, is a threat to the very
existence of the union.“Merit
Pay,” Witchhunting and Corporatizing Public Education(26 November
2007)

Militant
Protest Sinks BMCC “Homeland
Security” ProgramA firestorm of protest by students and
faculty at the Borough of Manhattan Community College defeated an
ominous Homeland Security program that campus administrators sought to
sneak in. Planned courses included “interrogation techniques” and “technology for surveillance.” The sinister program was
dropped because of the campaign of protest and exposure initiated by
the CUNY Internationalist Clubs last fall. Militant
Protest Sinks BMCC “Homeland Security” Program (25 March
2005)

Brazilian
Workers Mobilize for Freedom for Mumia Abu-JamalOver the last month Brazilian workers
have undertaken a series of
strikes
and demonstrations that have begun to translate calls for freedom for
death
row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal into labor action. A November 10
work stoppage by the CUT labor federation of the state of Rio de
Janeiro
made freedom for the renowned U.S. black journalist one of its demands.
On November 22, a labor-centered march in Rio for the "Day of Black
Conscioiusness"
also raised the call to free Mumia as one of its key demands, as did a
strike by bank workers two days later. On December 7, Rio teachers
struck
for half a day, including among their demands freedom for Jamal. This
shows
the potential to mobilize powerful working-class action to free Mumia
and
block the capitalist state murder machinery. Brazilian
Workers Mobilize for Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal (9 December
1999)

fter
Massacres at
Sicartsa Steel Mill and Atenco Mexico: Oaxaca Teachers Repel Bloody
Cop AssaultWith two
weeks to go before Mexico’s
presidential elections, in a blatant provocation the government of
Oaxaca ordered the violent police eviction of striking teachers who for
the past three weeks have been occupying the center of the state
capital. This is how the Mexican bourgeoisie prepares its electoral
farce drenched with workers’ blood. But they only succeeded in
shooting themselves in the foot, and the eviction failed miserably.
After three hours of pitched battle, the 40,000 strikers managed to
break through police lines and throw out the repressive forces.
Coming after the massacres of steel workers in Lázaro
Cárdenas, Michoacán and of peasants in San Salvador
Atenco, it is urgent to launch a national strike against the murderous
government. Above all, what is required is a political response to the
bourgeois class offensive. The Grupo
Internacionalista calls for no vote for the PAN, PRI, PRD or any other
bosses’
party, to break with the popular front around PRD candidate
López
Obrador, and to forge the nucleus of a revolutionary workers
party. Mexico:
Oaxaca Teachers Repel Bloody Cop Assault(16 June 2006)

Spirited Solidarity Picket in New York“Oaxaca Teachers, We
Are With You!”On
September 21, some 150 teachers, professors, trade-unionists, students,
leftists and community activists joined in an energetic picket outside
Mexico’s Consulate General in New York to “Protest Repression in
Oaxaca, Mexico – Defend the Striking Teachers.” The picketers were
demonstrating militant solidarity with the 70,000 teachers in the
southern Mexican state on strike since last May 22, who have braved
massive police repression and death squads that have killed at least
five strike supporters in the last month. “Maestros oaxaqueños, estamos con
ustedes” (Oaxaca teachers, we are with you), the NYC
demonstrators chanted. The chant was so loud, in fact, that it was
heard all the way to Oaxaca, via a live broadcast from the picket line
to the strikers’ station, Radio Plantón (Sit-In Radio). Over
several weeks, union activists from the Professional Staff Congress and
the United Federation of Teachers gathered support for the protest in
support of the Oaxaca teachers. The Internationalist Group and the
Internationalist Clubs at CUNY played an important role in initiating
and building the picket along with activists in the PSC and UFT.“Oaxaca
Teachers, We Are With You!”(21 September 2006)